Digital Asset Research, Inc. (“DAR”, “the Company”, or “we”), the world’s leading provider of cryptocurrency research and data for institutional investors, has published a 77-page analysis of the Cardano network and ADA digital asset. Cardano is a high-profile smart contract platform and is being built with a substantial focus on security and formal verification, which is the process of using math to prove the correctness of software without having to test all potential execution outcomes. The report includes an overview of Cardano’s technology stack, an economic and valuation analysis of ADA, and an examination of the project’s competition and roadmap.

Cardano is still in a very early stage of development. There is a native token, ADA, and a standalone network, but all validating nodes are controlled by the project’s creators and the current iteration of the platform does not feature smart contract execution. Nonetheless, Lucas Nuzzi, Director of Technology at DAR, said: “The team behind the project is technically competent and we have been impressed with their current and proposed technology.”

Cardano is pursuing the development of two virtual machines; a formally verified version of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (K-EVM), and a register-based virtual machine inspired by LLVM (IELE-VM). The K-EVM enables Cardano to leverage Ethereum’s already existing ecosystem of developers and tools, while the IELE-VM provides stronger safety guarantees for the execution of smart contracts. Nuzzi said: “Although neither the K-EVM nor the IELE-VM has been activated on the Cardano mainnet, we did perform several tests on the Goguen testnet and disclosed the results to our clients.”

DAR’s economic analysis revealed what one might expect from a nascent project: a low number of transactions and low aggregate network fees. However, somewhat counter to this is USD transaction amounts, which peaked at nearly $60B in a single day. Cipolaro said: “This is 10x larger than Bitcoin’s peak and was unexpected.”

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About Digital Asset Research, Inc.

Digital Asset Research is a collection of technologists, developers, traditional investment analysts, legal scholars, and economists. The Company was formed in response to meet the growing need for institutional quality research in the nascent digital token space. It is the Company’s objective to provide unbiased research, analysis, and insights for hedge funds, family offices, venture capitalists, and traditional asset managers. For more information, please visit https://www.digitalassetresearch.com/